World War II Online Reloaded - Can MMOs Be Rehabilitated?

Thanks to FiringSquad for its article revisiting the state of PC MMO World War II Online, as the writer asks: "Three years ago I uninstalled World War II Online and lamented a good idea gone bad. Now I can barely force myself to write this article for fear of losing Maastricht to a British counter-offensive." With FiringSquad's original review stating "the vast majority of you will simply feel cheated", things seem to have changed, from the same reviewer's perspective: "Somewhere along the way, World War II Online got good. The game isn't so much better than it used to be because the graphics got some sprucing up or because of new weapons. It happened in the community." Can a keen, well-organized community and post-launch patching rehabilitate an MMO, or will a sub-optimal launch doom it?

Comments

my 2 cents

[dd3123]

I've played a lot of MMOGs and I can honestly say, none of them held my interest for long. Perhaps its because I've been spoiled on WWIIOL and nothing comes even close to what it does. Did WWIIOL have a really bad launch? Yep. No one disputes that at all. But CRS (the developers) have quite literally taken on the likes of a pheonix, rising from the ashes of destruction to produce IMHO a brilliant game. Despite claims by other companies, WWIIOL *IS* the largest battlefield. No zones. No loading. Once you are in, you can fly, walk, swim, drive across all of europe. Hop in a HE-111 bomber deep within Germany, fly to England and bomb some factories in a raid, and pray you don't get shot down by scrambling fighters. Anyways, I wont bore you guys with another review, as most of the community feel that the firingsquad review was quite fair. There is a free trial at filefront (14 days) and obviously I highly suggest you join the war and see why this game has survived, and grown for 3 years despite the disaster launch: http://files.filefront.com/3406002;/pub2/World%20W ar%20II%20Online/Official%20Demos//

Re:my 2 cents

[Anonymous Coward]

I was one of the many that bought WWIionline when it first came out, needless to say i was dissappointed. but after casually following the game for about a year afterwards, my interest peaked yet again and i played on one of them 14-day trial thingys, needless to say, i was hooked thereafter.

the interation between the Devs (CRS) and the community is one that other MMO companies should establish. the devs very regularly post and interact with the players in the game, and on the forums, thats almost unheard of in some mmo's.

i'll admit the sys specs are high, you'll need a pretty fast cpu, atleast 1 gb ram and a min 64 mb vid card. but when you look at the size of the map and scale, you'll see why the sys specs are so high, there is no "zoning" in this game, its one continous map. heck people even have expeditions to the alp ingame heh.

its very exhilarating to participate in a tank column of 20-30 tanks. or on a bombing run to destroy the enemies factories. there are so many aspects to this game, and everytime you log on to play its always something different, its never the same ol, same ol.

want to see how big the map is?

http://gophur.playnet.com/gophur/map.html

I hope people will shake off the label that WWIIonline recieved at launch and give this great game a try.

see you on the BattleField.

Re:my 2 cents

[Anonymous Coward]

We looked long and hard at medics and ultimately wnt to add them, but for gameplay in a realistic sim, you have to realize that by the time you need a medic, you're not firing your rifle much more. It does make for a brutal but hinest game. We leave the power ups to the arcade shooters.

Gophur
Producer
WWIIOL

Re:Sub-optimal launch?

[Liquidrage]

COH had a very good release. Server's were very good, login and regestration were no problem.

DAoC had a very good release. I experienced no hiccups but some did. Overall it was more like an A- release.

EQ's release wasn't that bad really. People make it out to be worse then it was. The 1st 3 days of release had as much downtime then uptime due mostly to the login servers. Overall though, it didn't go that bad.

Horizon's launch went smoothly. Mostly because no one was playing it.

I would say all of those at the least had acceptable launches. With CoH being nearly flawless (even though I don't care much for the game itself) and DAoC being good enough to be what I would call optimal.

SWG, AO, WWIIO, all had horrible launches with more problems then should be acceptable.

What sets the top from the bottom apart the most was that the client and server source code was stable in the top list of games. Where DAoC and EQ had problems were in there login servers being overloaded. DAoC was able to handle it a little better (but of course it was two years later).
Where as that bottom group all had bugs that crashed the client or the server with regularity. That to me is not acceptable in a commercial game. I can understand being a victim of popularity, and thankfully it seems like that side of things have been addressed for the most part. I cannot understand releasing a non-stable codebase in a commerical product.